1. Field of the Invention
The invention refers to a method for electronically receiving data comprising the steps of receiving data inputs, checking the validity of said data inputs by a preprocessor, and transferring said data inputs to an application of the computer system. The present invention further relates to an apparatus for carrying out an electronic data processing method.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
In electronic data processing (EDP) essentially data are processed, stored, retrieved and changed. There is especially one criterion important in all fields of EDP with this, namely the authenticity, the faultlessness or validity and reliability of the data. Even the most innovative EDP system is only able to deliver poor results if the data it is based on are erroneous or invalid.
To solve this problem various methods are used in known EDP systems to make a transfer without information loss and an authentic marking of the data possible. Such methods are realised for example at machine level, by protocols including checksum calculation, by redundant codes with the possibility of error recognition and removal or by machine readable documents, such as scanable documents, barcodes, optical character recognition (OCR), and so forth. With a manual data input item numbers could for example be provided with check digits, to recognize and reject an invalid input. All those methods have the object to optimize the consistency and faultlessness of data during their transfer from A to B and to minimize or to prevent a loss of information during this transfer.
One main source, however, for erroneous data in EDP systems is in the field of data receiving, i.e. when data are generated in an EDP readable format for the first time, wherein mistakes or failures mainly appear at the manual data input, where a user enters or inputs the data manually into a computer system, usually via a terminal. Due to possible invalid data inputs there exists a high probability for information errors, which moreover will be permanent in the system for the whole lifetime of the data. Defective or faulty data may be for example wrong written names and addresses, wrong item numbers and price declarations, erroneous production quantities or measuring values and many more like this. In critical cases there may be for example a wrong diagnosis at the doctor, a too high dose of medicine, a wrong spare part at the garage or a too high reactor temperature in chemical processes.
The exemplary above mentioned mis-entrys should be avoided or corrected already at the source, i.e. at the level of data entry, if possible. There are known various simple methods for applications to ensure the basic elements of data receiving. These are for example text filters or numeric filters, logical tests of the inputs, checking the lengths of the inputs and the like. Thus it may be prevented that e.g. a user can enter a first name in a field intended for telephone numbers or enter the 32nd day of a month in a field intended for date. Such methods for checking the input of data, however; are often not used in the corresponding applications.
In view of the above mentioned state of the art it is an object of the present invention to provide a data receiving method and an EDP system ensuring that the application(s) of the system do(es) not work with erroneous or invalid data inputs, and this especially even if the application(s) of the system are not equipped with their own input examination.
According to the present invention, before the data inputs are transferred to one or more applications of the computer system, their validity is checked and invalid data inputs are rejected or corrected so that the application(s) can work with error-free or valid data even if the application(s) itself (themselves) does (do) not comprise its (their) own entry examination of data inputs. The checking of the data inputs is carried out by one or more preprocessors being integrated into the event process.
Another advantage of the invention is the fact that the data receiving method and the EDP system, respectively, may be applied to single-tasking or console-oriented operation systems, such as DOS, as well as to multi-tasking or window-oriented operation systems, such as Windows. Depending on the kind of the operation system the checking of the data inputs is integrated bind into the event process of the computer system at different places.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, before the actual usage or the purpose of the preprocessor or the data receiving method, respectively, all relevant data inputs are automatically and/or manually analysed by the preprocessor. Based on this analysis, the preprocessor generates an analysis- and action-profile, with which the checking and processing of the data inputs are performed.
Preferably, for each user of an application there may be generated an own analysis- and action-profile.
Further, with the support of the preprocessor the applications could be extended with functions desired by the user, which then may be used as a component of the application.